(deadline.com) Hollywood is in a tizzy over the early tracking which just came online this morning for Walt Disney Studios‘ John Carter opening March 9th. “Not good. 2 unaided, 53 aware, 27 definitely interested, 3 first choice,” a senior exec at a rival studio emails me. Another writes me, ”It just came out. Women of all ages have flat out rejected the film. The tracking for John Carter is shocking for a film that cost over $250 million. This could be the biggest writeoff of all time.” I’m hearing figures in the neighborhood of $100 million. And the studio isn’t even trying to spin reports of the 3D pic’s bloated budget any more.
Now, to be fair, this very soft tracking has been expected. The studios’ private reports have shown for some time very soft awareness and very little wannasee. So what’s Disney’s explanation? “It’s the last leftover from the previous regime of Dick Cook,” an executive who works for successor Rich Ross reminds me. “We’re not running away from the movie. Our job is to sell it.” Then again, Cook also left Ross Alice In Wonderland to sell, too, along with other hits and a few misses.
Disney is nervous, really nervous, but trying to hold out some hope. ”We know that we have a long way to go. It’s still four weeks out, and the bulk of the media hasn’t hit yet. Our Super Bowl ad did what we intended it to do: have a pop of awareness. On Sunday we launch a full campaign with 90+% of all of our media ready to go.” Problem is, John Carter (formerly titled John Carter Of Mars) only has a two-week window before Lionsgate’s hotly anticipated The Hunger Games opens March 23rd.
Disney is still planning a gigantic worldwide day-and-date push for John Carter with all the frills no matter how dismal its prospects look. ”After all the movie has Andrew Stanton of Finding Nemo and Wall-E,” an insider explains to me.
Industrial Light & Magic: Drawing Board for a Digital Age
(nytimes.com) SAN FRANCISCO — The Yoda fountain greets you first, the little guy sagely standing sentry outside a former veterans hospital in the leafy acres of the Presidio. Inside there are a couple of Stormtroopers and the dark lord himself, Darth Vader. Around the corner E.T. is flying in his bicycle basket, over the head of Slimer, the green meanie from “Ghostbusters,” and a roaring dinosaur from “Jurassic Park.” Emerging from a closet, R2D2 beeps and coos and spins down the hallway. Visiting Industrial Light & Magic, the effects shop founded by George Lucas, is like touring childhood, coasting through a collective memory of wonder.
The company, which pioneered digital effects starting in the 1970s, has put its “gee whiz, how’d they do that?” stamp on hundreds of movies (“Titanic,” “Forrest Gump” and the “Indiana Jones” and “Mission: Impossible” series, among others). Mementos like cars, spaceships and creature tongues line the hallways of its campuslike headquarters here, alongside framed Italian film posters from Mr. Lucas’s collection. As usual Industrial Light & Magic is a player in the technical categories at the Oscars, nominated this year for the visual effects and sound in “Transformers: Dark of the Moon” and the sound in “War Horse” (done at Skywalker Sound, a related company). But it is also a nominee in animation, with its first full-length animated film, “Rango.”
Directed by Gore Verbinski (whose credits include the first three “Pirates of the Caribbean” movies, also Industrial Light projects), “Rango,” about a lizard, voiced by Johnny Depp, who becomes a small-town sheriff, is in some ways an anomaly in contemporary animation: it is 2-D, not 3-D, and the filmmakers invented characters and story lines while hanging out together in a house. Then, instead of being locked alone in a booth, the actors recorded the voices together on a soundstage, wearing cowboy hats and using doofy props to improvise. This shambling style would seem at odds with the digital precision of Industrial Light. And that is exactly what veterans of the company liked about it.
In the popular imagination digital filmmaking — animated or live action — is a clean, sterile process, a lot of button pushing and knob tweaking. Though there’s some truth to that, this is an image that its pioneers, like the people at Pixar and Peter Jackson’s Weta Digital, have tried to controvert. In reality animators and effects maestros alike strive to inject humanity, in the form of blemishes and surprises, into their work, and that often takes hand-cranked effort — even if it’s surrounded by millions of dollars of high-tech wizardry.
“Computers want to make everything perfect, they want to make everything shiny and clean and polished, and we’re always trying to beat that out of them,” said Hal Hickel, the animation director of “Rango.”
Set in the fictional town of Dirt, with a cast of mangy, hard-to-identify animals, “Rango” is a good example of imperfection: the look is all dusty and sweaty, with stray grit and hair. Mr. Verbinski, who made his animation debut with the film, called it fuzz, and he was constantly asking his animators to add it into shots.
“What he meant was, find some imperfections, put a little hitch in it or a little twitch under the character’s eye or just some little idiosyncrasy,” Mr. Hickel said. “Gore would say we were always having to fabricate anomaly.”
In his office, beneath a sign reading “No Right Angles,” John Bell, the supervising art director of “Rango,” pulled out a sheaf of his drawings to demonstrate. Yes, paper sketches: Mr. Bell, a longtime animator who has worked on films from “Back to the Future” (he helped design the hoverboard) to Steven Spielberg’s “A.I.,” begins his work with a notepad and a fat carpenter pencil. “I’m a 20th-century holdover,” he said, laughing. For “Rango” he drafted the flophouse and the mayor’s mansion, considering details like whether the doorknobs would be shiny or rusted, and what oil paintings the mayor might have of himself.
“Everything has to be thought of, everything has to be designed — the path of the sun, what’s the dirt look like,” he said.
For inspiration animators and effects experts look to art, books, movies and, naturally, YouTube. “I was just looking at something this morning, it was a crow snowboarding down a snowy roof in a little piece of plastic,” said Mr. Hickel, who began his career at Industrial Light with “The Lost World,” the sequel to “Jurassic Park.” “You look at that, and you think: ‘Someday I’m going to have to animate a snowboarding bird. I better hold onto that.’ ”
Of course at Industrial Light, there are also high-tech resources. The image-capture studio, ringed with 45 high-fidelity cameras, employs technology used in the military and medical fields, as well as proprietary software. James Cameron and Michael Bay have come through, for “Titanic” and “Transformers.” In a corner, near a beat-up mannequin, hung a motion-capture suit. “Almost every movie we have has some form of what we would call a digital double or a humanoid performance,” said Mike Sanders, a digital supervisor at Industrial Light.
For “Rango” the studio was used as a stand-in soundstage; monitors showed different views of the townscape of Dirt. “The camera system in this room is triangulating where these points are in space,” Mr. Sanders said, handing me an iPad-like device that functioned as a joystick. “Computers back there tell us: ‘I know where you are in the room. I’m going to put you in the same spot inside the town of Dirt.’ ” As I walked around the room with the joystick, angling it, I moved through Dirt, getting a new perspective on the scene — a real-life way to navigate through digital space. It’s a tool, Mr. Sanders said, to tell animators where a camera should go or how to set up a shot, and it felt like being inside a very cool video game.
Coolness is definitely a factor at Industrial Light & Magic. “What’s next?” Mr. Sanders said. “How can we outdo ourselves? That’s a big part of storytelling.”
Sometimes, though, all they need is a body. Faced with a tight deadline on “Titanic” and a scene on the deck that wasn’t really working, Mr. Sanders pulled an all-nighter. “I got the deck chair, and I just shot in the motion-capture library, doing different things in a deck chair,” he said. He altered his image digitally later, but he is literally every body on the deck of the “Titanic.” Mr. Bay too has appeared in some scenes in “Transformers,” only to be digitally scrubbed later.
For “Rango” Mr. Verbinski videotaped his cast members as they did their voice-overs and gave the footage to the animators as a template. Speaking of Isla Fisher, who voiced the love interest, Beans, Mr. Hickel said, “Gore would go through it with us and say: ‘I love what Isla’s doing here with her eyes. It’s very funny. And Johnny’s got a great hand gesture here on this line.”
It’s a technique that animators use themselves, in much more DIY fashion. In a corner of the compound there is a little room lined with mirrors, where they go and tape themselves performing scenes. “We go a lot into our acting room,” said Maia Kayser, who animated Beans. “It’s a fun part of the process, because it’s a good way to explore ideas.”
That these multimillion-dollar blockbusters are made in the same way many of the creators first approached them — acting out their favorite scenes privately — is not lost on the people here. How many people at Industrial Light are “Star Wars” nerds? “Pretty much all of them,” Mr. Hickel said cheerfully. “You’ve always got some people who try to be cool about it. They’d be like: ‘Who was that snow creature that attacks? I can’t think of what the name is,’ and you know full well that they know it’s a Wampa.”
San Rafael's 32TEN Studios Quickly Signs 3 Prod Companies
32TEN Studios has Signed Three Production Companies to Relocate into Historic Site (www.32ten.com)
San Rafael, CA , February 15, 2012 | SHOOT Publicity Wire | --- Recently launched 32TEN Studios, a new company based in San Rafael, CA, that provides stage rentals and both practical and digital VFX services, has signed three initial subtenant companies which will soon relocate into the historic site. The announcement was made by Tim Partridge, President/CEO, and Greg Maloney, COO, of 32TEN Studios.
RipplFX was the first outside production company to sign as a subtenant to 32TEN Studios. RipplFX is a mobile app developer and trans-media production company currently building a library of content for distribution across multiple platforms for books, games and films. "When I was introduced to 32TEN, I knew it would be the perfect environment to grow our operations. We are proud and excited to be part of this creative community and the legacy that has come before and continues today. Being here for just a short time has already had a wonderful impact on our clients and partners," said Nicole Lundeen, RipplFX CEO. RipplFX is currently producing a series of mobile apps and trans-media strategies for the publishing, education, and entertainment industries.
Jessen Productions will also be taking office space at the 32TEN Studios stage and office complex. Charles "Chuck" Jessen is a 28 year advertising veteran, having worked for ad agencies DDB, BBDO and Young & Rubicam on such accounts as Chevron, Clorox, Microsoft and Apple. Jessen Productions' commercials have been featured on "World's Funniest" TV programs around the globe. "32TEN is the ideal place for me," writer/director Jessen said. "They have the facilities I need, and are creating a community of like minded people that will certainly help keep our creative juices flowing."
Commercial production company GB-Films will also be taking office and edit room space at 32TEN Studios, starting on March 1st. " We love the creative atmosphere that is forming here at 32TEN, and of course the history in the building itself is inspiring," said Andy Hill, CEO and Creative Director, GB-Films. "I'm looking forward to bringing my clients to this legendary soundstage and creating engaging content for them."
Said Mr. Partridge, "Within only a month after we announced the launch of our new 32TEN Studio venture here in San Rafael, we are delighted to have so quickly signed three dynamic companies as subtenants in our facility. Our goal for 32TEN Studios is to add a sense of revitalization to the long-standing film production community located here in Marin, CA. Our soundstage is already fully booked up throughout the month of February with commercial projects, while our Practical Effects Team is already engaged in bidding for shots on three upcoming indie and studio feature films."
'Rango' Progression Reel Showcases the Evolution of Its Animation (Video)
Paramount and ILM releases a two-and-a-half-minute clip examining the effort that went into creating the film's dusty, distinctive landscape.
VIDEO - Take a look: http://www.hollywoodreporter.
India's 2012 Budget: 10 Years Tax Holiday for Animation Industry
(economictimes.indiatimes.com)
FICCI in its pre-budget memorandum has given the following recommendations for Animation, Gaming & VFX industry:
> On the lines of IITs and IIMs, Government should consider setting up Centers of Excellence for the Animation, Gaming & VFX Industry which also offers opportunities for applied and commercial and others type of arts.
> 10 Years Tax Holiday for Animation Industry.
> Lifting of service tax on studios developing original content.
> Exemption of Import Duty on Hardware for a Period of 10 Years.
> Provision of 50% reimbursable MDA (Market Development Assistance) for travel and registration fees to international market events. Government to extend support under MDA/MAI activity - exhibiting Indian companies, by setting Indian Pavilions in the world markets. What is needed is to help bring local production companies to international markets, collected and disseminate information and help support the infrastructure needed for a healthy media market to develop.
> To promote domestic gaming market, Excise Duty on local manufacture should be brought down from 12.5% to 0% (similar to film and music industry). This will enable CVD to be brought to zero also. The effective reduction in taxes would be around 15%. Import duty on consoles (Gaming hardware) which will increase the installed base to enable the local developer ecosystem to flourish needs to be brought down to 0%.
> Mandate should be given to commercial bankers to treat animation sector on priority. This will enable them to provide funds at concessional rate.
> Encouragement should be given to entities through reduced tax rates/incentives (exempt withholding taxes for overseas payments to foreign artists stationed overseas) for exploitation of own developed content in overseas markets.
> The MAT applicability for units undertaking animation work in SEZ should be withdrawn to encourage export of animated contents.
> The government should introduce subsidies like a CNC Fund (in France) to fund animated content co-produced and developed in India to enable Indian producers to be competitive on a global scale.
'World War Z' Cleared Of Hungarian Weapons Trafficking Charges
(huffingtonpost.com)Good news: as far as Hungarian officials are concerned, Brad Pitt has no ties to illegal arms traffickers.
Back in October, a Hungarian Anti-Terrorism Unit stormed a warehouse that contained 85 fully-functioning assault rifles intended for use on Pitt's upcoming zombie film, "World War Z." It's illegal to transport working weapons into the country, and because the guns, which were sent from the UK to Budapest, were easily readjusted to fire live ammunition, they were considered an illicit shipment.
Now, according to Hungarian outlets, Pitt's crew has had the charges dropped on a technicality: because the shipment came in to the duty-free area of the country's airport, and there was no one there with ownership rights initially waiting to receive them, it is impossible to hit any specific party with the illegal trafficking charge.
If accurate, it's good news for Pitt, who can now enjoy the upcoming Academy Awards -- where he's up for two statues, including Best Actor -- safe in the knowledge that there will be no Hungarian police out to take him down.
Wellington Banking on Return of Blue Magic
(stuff.co.nz) Sir Peter Jackson's Weta Digital is expecting that film director James Cameron will make Avatar 2 and 3 in Wellington, film industry sources say.
It is a job that could be worth hundreds of millions and employ hundreds of people for several years but it is not yet a done deal.
Confidence that Cameron would choose Weta and Wellington again to make Avatar 2 and 3 rose when the director recently bought two farms in the Wairarapa.
Cameron having a base here is seen as a "positive" sign that his decision will favour Weta. He has expressed a desire to shoot the sequels here but a decision is yet to be announced by his company Lightstorm Entertainment.
About $362 million was spent in New Zealand making the first Avatar 3-D film, employing hundreds of digital animators in Wellington for years on the complex computer-generated images.
Avatar employed more than 1500 people in New Zealand and injected about $100m into the Wellington economy alone. As well as the digital animation, Weta did the conceptual design, specialty costumes, props and weapons for the film.
Two Weta sources said they hoped Wellington would be picked. "Fingers crossed," one highly placed source said.
The other said Cameron's move to the farm, which is about 15 to 20 minutes by helicopter from Weta's base near Wellington airport, gave greater confidence.
Film Wellington manager Delia Shanly said they had heard the rumours of Avatar sequels being made in Wellington, but there was nothing concrete.
"It would be absolutely amazing to have them back here," she said. "It put so many millions into the Wellington and New Zealand economy. It would just be amazing (to get parts 2 and 3)."
While Cameron's decision to buy a farm here did not make the decision a certainty, "it is not unpromising – it is a very good sign".
In another good sign for Weta, US director Steven Spielberg this week confirmed that Peter Jackson would direct the second Tintin movie in a planned trilogy. Spielberg said Jackson would go into production on the Tintin sequel as soon as he finishes work on The Hobbit films.
Released last year, the first Tintin film has already made US$371m worldwide.
Avatar also got $52m in tax breaks from Kiwi taxpayers despite it becoming the biggest selling movie of all time, making more than US$2.8 billion for Twentieth Century Fox studios.
That is part of Fox Entertainment Group, in turn owned by media mogul Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation.
In the 2010 June year, Twentieth Century Fox made a US$1.35b profit on the back of Avatar and Ice Age. Some estimates put Avatar's absolute profits for Fox at more than US$1.15 billion, even more profitable than Cameron's other blockbuster, Titanic.
Shanly said the tax breaks were vital for the film sector to attract filmmakers to New Zealand.
New Zealand was also attractive for non-unionised labour and skilled staff at companies.
"If we didn't have a 15 per cent tax break we wouldn't even begin a conversation with these [overseas] film makers," she said.
New Zealand was never going to be the $2 Shop of film making and should not try to be a cheap destination.
But people like Cameron were attracted here by highly skilled people who can deliver.
"We have a huge reputation for our talent and they can make something happen, even it has never been done before," Shanly said.
Part of the production of Avatar was based in Wellington, including the world-class facilities at Stone Street Studios, Weta Workshop and Weta Digital. The three groups are jointly owned by Sir Peter Jackson, Sir Richard Taylor and Jamie Selkirk.
There was also live action shooting in other parts of the city for Avatar.
The film was seen as a technological breakthrough by Weta Digital, following on from the visual effects work in Jackson's King Kong and The Lord of the Rings films.
For Avatar, Weta used high definition video cameras attached to an actor's face to capture highly realistic facial animation for the characters in the science fiction film.
The fact that Weta had delivered in the first Avatar and helped make Cameron pots of money were seen as factors in Wellington's favour.
Making the sequels would also add to the continuity of the movies and maintain Cameron's vision for the world of Avatar, set on the fictional planet Pandora.
It would also slot in nicely to the Weta work schedule, after the two Hobbit films are completed during the next two years. However, Wellington could be over-ruled by a producer who was looking at the bottom line, possibly seeking bigger tax breaks elsewhere.
Fox did not respond to requests for comment about Avatar.
Reports last year also cast some doubt about a return to Wellington for the Avatar sequels.
Cameron and his team have moved to the MBS Media Campus in Hollywood where Pirates of the Caribbean and Iron Man were made. Avatar producer Jon Landau said in June last year that the campus would be the "heart of the next two Avatars".
But at the time Weta boss Joe Letteri said Wellington was still in the running for Avatar 2 and 3, and that Cameron had visited Weta to discuss its possible involvement. MBS Media could be used for performance capture with other work done in Wellington.
WETA is the second largest digital animation company in the world, just behind US giant Pixar, with about 900 staff now working on two Hobbit movies and visual effects for Superman – Man of Steel.
The first Hobbit film should be finished at the end of this year and the second the year after. The Superman film is slated for 2013, as well as another film, Elysium, with Weta doing work on conceptual designs and physical effects.
Elysium is another science fiction film set on a planet in the distant future, written and directed by Neill Blomkamp, who also directed District 9. Elysium stars Matt Damon, Jodie Foster and the main production is being done in Canada.
The follow-up Avatar movies are expected to be shot back to back and released in December 2014 and 2015 respectively, according to reports last year which quoted Cameron saying he was working on the two scripts.
However, the first film was long delayed and some international references suggest Avatar 2 will come out in 2016, not 2014.
Given the huge amount of work and time taken to produce the first Avatar film a decision on where to make it could be made in coming months.
The first Avatar is the biggest selling movie of all time, unadjusted for inflation, making about US$2.8 billion worldwide. Cameron's Titanic, made in 1997, grossed US$1.8 billion, at the time also the biggest selling movie.
Despite the huge success of Avatar, which earned US$350m for Cameron alone, New Zealand taxpayers kicked in almost $53m to make it.
Avatar received a total of $52.9 million from the Large Budget Screen Production Grant based on qualifying spending of $362.8m, according to Film Commission figures.
The grant was given to the film production company 880 Productions, part of the Fox studios empire.
Weta Digital's Letteri was travelling overseas and could not be reached for comment.
A Weta spokesman in Wellington said there was "not much we can say". The decision was up to Cameron's production company: "They have all the cards."
Letteri is expected to attend the Oscars on February 26, where he is nominated for a Visual Effects award for work on Rise of the Planet of the Apes.
It is the sixth Oscar nomination for Letteri, who was also won the award for Avatar in 2009 and King Kong as well as two Lord of the Rings films by Jackson. He was nominated but did not win for I, Robot.
Meanwhile, Shanly said having Cameron living in New Zealand would bring the film world closer to Wellington, given his international connections.
The first Avatar film did not involve much location shooting – most work was done in a studio.
Avatar was "the most prominent film in the Western world, so having that based in Wellington, showed that Wellington could perform" Shanly said.
It was the first major international film done in Wellington that was not made by Jackson.
Cameron was a director at the top of his creative game who had chosen Weta to create a "ground-breaking" vision of the science fiction world of Pandora.
"He chose Wellington. That is a real stamp of approval," Shanly said.
"And Wellington did it extremely successfully."
Dreamworks Animation Keeps ‘Panda-ring’ to China
(chinafilmbiz.wordpress.com)February 17, 2012 from Beijing, China I’m happy to be reporting today from Beijing, where I’ve just finished a second day of investor meetings on my 10-day, multi-city China trip. Things are going quite well; the level of interest among investors wishing to fund films made outside of China is higher than I’ve ever experienced. With a little luck I’ll be making an announcement regarding my company, Pacific Bridge Pictures, in the coming weeks.
Of course, any announcement I might make would pale in comparison to the one apparently being engineered by Dreamworks Animation (DWA) CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg. Although it hasn’t happened yet, it’s been widely reported that Katzenberg has arranged to have China’s President-apparent Xi Jinping announce today the formation of a new three-way, Chinese government-backed, $2 billion joint-venture between DWA, Shanghai Media Group, and China Media Capital.
According to reports in the Chinese press, under the terms of the joint venture the three companies will construct a studio facility in Shanghai with the intent of developing and producing film, television and live stage productions aimed at the booming Chinese media market.
None of the partners has deigned to comment or confirm the reports, but we’ll presumably know today whether there is truth to the story.
Assuming it is true, I’m giving Jeffrey Katzenberg a virtual kowtow of admiration and respect for his exemplary showmanship. Enlisting China’s President-to-be as his emissary is a brilliant political and public relations coup, and a win-win both for him and for Xi. As he prepares to assume the mantle of leadership in the People’s Republic, Xi gets to demonstrate China’s largesse (and importance) to the U.S. by showering a major Hollywood company with a $2 billion ‘gift,’ while deflecting attention from China’s extremely one-sided behavior with respect to entertainment trade. For Katzenberg, Xi’s endorsement would cement his standing in China’s animation business, and also send an important signal to Hollywood that he sees China as his most important territory after North America.
Although they have been quieter until now than DWA, Hollywood’s other major animation companies should not by any means be counted out. It hasn’t escaped the attention of Universal’s Illumination or Disney’s Pixar that China’s family animation market tripled in size in 2011 versus the prior year.
REAL STEEL: The Visual Effects, SimulCam, & Practical Robot Animatronics
(collider.com) When director Shawn Levy’s Real Steel opened last October, it surprised quite a few people. For one, the so-called “robot boxing movie” packed a whole lot of heart. While some may have been expecting wall-to-wall robot fights, they soon found out that buried beneath this sci-fi adventure was an emotional father-son story. Secondly, audiences discovered that Real Steel featured some of the best visual effects of the year. I nstead of relying solely on CG for the numerous robot-boxing matches, Levy opted for a nuanced blend of practical effects and cutting-edge motion capture technology. What resulted was some of the most seamlessly blended effects in recent memory. When it came time for the Oscars to announce the contenders in the Best Visual Effects category, it was no surprise that Real Steel popped up on the list.
As we’re just a few weeks away from the Academy Awards, Steve got the chance to sit down with Levy earlier today to talk about the visual effects in the film. In addition to musing on the hybrid effects approach, the SimulCam technology that made the effects possible, and what sets Real Steel apart from the other VFX nominees, Levy also provided a few updates on the Real Steel sequel, specifically talking about how their approach to Real Steel 2 was directly influenced by what demographics responded to Real Steel most passionately. Hit the jump to watch the full interview.
Video - FX Cuts From The Film: http://collider.com/shawn-levy-real-steel-sequel- interview/145178/
John Carter Producer: Pixar Backlash to Blame for Cars 2 Oscar Snub?
(movieline.com) Last summer’s Cars 2 marked a notable footnote in the history of Pixar Animation, just not a good one; despite opening to the studio’s sixth-highest worldwide take to date, the sequel to 2006’s Cars earned middling reviews, prompted critics to deem it a commercial cash-grab, and eventually – maybe most shockingly, given the studio's track record – became the first Pixar film not to nab an Oscar nod for Best Animated Feature since the category was inaugurated. Could it be, as Pixar producer Lindsey Collins suggests, that Cars 2 was Oscar-snubbed because of anti-Pixar backlash?
Speaking with press today in Phoenix, Arizona for John Carter, which she produced for longtime Pixar collaborator Andrew Stanton, Collins assessed why Cars 2 was overlooked in favor of five other animated films (A Cat in Paris, Chico and Rita, Kung Fu Panda 2, Puss in Boots, and Rango).
“The fact that [Cars 2] was a sequel -- in a way it’s funny, because obviously from a franchise standpoint people love sequels,” Collins explained. “And certainly from a franchise standpoint Cars 2 did insanely well, such that we can’t even count it as a good metric to tell us whether or not to do sequels.”
Sequel status aside, Collins surmised a larger reason was working against the John Lasseter-directed pic, which was the first Pixar film to earn an overall “rotten” score on Rotten Tomatoes. “I think it had the fact that Pixar has dominated going against it,” she added. “At a certain point there was going to be somebody who was going to take the fall a little bit. It was going to be like, ‘Eh, we don’t like that one.’”
Then again, Cars 2’s nomination miss could also be chalked up to the relatively deep field of animated films in the running for Oscar this year – many of which surprised Collins and defied her own expectations of the competition. “I see every single one of these things because my kids drag me to them all, and to me it felt like God, there are some great animated films this year. I actually had one of those, ‘There’s two hours of my life that I’m never going to get back’ [thoughts], and then you walk out like, ‘Actually, that was quite good!’”
Among the “great pictures” not spawned from Pixar that Collins had praise for? “I loved Rango," she admitted. “There were actually some great pictures this year.”
As for the cold critical reception and accusations of crass commercialism Cars 2 received, Collins maintains that Lasseter “truly, truly loves” the sequel -- and Pixar, she says, supports the films its stable of directors want to make. “John loves that world, he loves those characters. We got accused of being very commercial with it and it’s kind of funny, it’s so ironic because if you’ve met John Lasseter there’s not a disingenuous bone in that man’s body.”
Zorro Reboot To Be Futuristic
(slashfilm.com) Fox is rebooting Zorro, and now plans to put Gael Garcia Bernal behind the mask. Zorro Reborn will be a “futuristic reboot” of the Zorro tale that will reportedly be set somewhere quite different from the story’s classic locales.
Fox won’t comment, but let’s hope that the script, by Glenn Gers and Lee Shipman & Brian McGreevy, is to Zorro what Outland was to High Noon. (That is: “In Spaaaaaace!”) All we know for certain is that Bernal will be “the Spanish swordsman as a masked vigilante bent on revenge.” Which is to say, he’s playing Zorro.
No director is on board as of yet.
The Most Expensive Places To Live In The VFX Industry
(vfxsoldier.wordpress.com)VFX Artist Aruna Inversin has a great post on Vancouver’s skyrocketing real estate prices:
Making a decision to move up north is not a small feat, especially in this rough and tumble world of the quick buck, cheap labor, and inadequate contracts. Here’s one reason to think twice.
Demographia, a property-affordability survey published by Illinois-based consultant Wendell Cox, estimates that median real-estate prices in Vancouver are 9.5 times median household income. Only Hong Kong and Sydney are less affordable by that measure. (New York comes in at 5.1.)
I’ve written a few posts on how Vancouver’s real estate market is the most unaffordable in the world.
However, even if real estate is affordable, I’ve written that VFX artists shouldn’t buy a home because the nature of the industry is project based. Even if you had gainful employment in Los Angeles, bouncing between Imageworks, Disney, DreamWorks, Digital Domain, and Rhythm & Hues are still long commutes from the suburbs. A mortgage is for 30 years, nobody had been at the same vfx company for that long… unless you’re George Lucas.
The Cost Of Living
Furthermore, even if you were just renting, you are subject to huge costs of living. There is a cost of living index taken every year by Mercer which helps companies measure the cost of living for employees about to make a move. It’s based off measuring housing, transport, food, clothing, household goods and entertainment. You can view the whole list here. I’ve listed cities where major VFX facilities reside below:
* 8 – Singapore
* 14 – Sydney
* 18 – London
* 65 – Vancouver
* 77 – Los Angeles
* 95 – Mumbai
* 106 – San Francisco
* 136 – Wellington
What’s crazy about this list is that Vancouver, Singapore, and London which are commonly known to pay lower rates than Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Wellington rank way up in the cost of living index. But there is one more huge burden we are forgetting when we choose to make the jump:
TAXES!!
I’ll bet not many VFX artists based in the US know this but if you chose to go work in another country, you still have to pay taxes on foreign income, even if you paid foreign taxes. A co-worker recently asked his CPA about moving to Vancouver and basically gave him this advice:
You need to make sure to stay out of the US for 18 or more months to not pay any US or CA state taxes. You can deduct the taxes you pay in Canada but will still owe money to the US fed if you stay out less than a year. You will still be taxed as a CA resident unless you stay out of CA for more than 18 months.
Obviously I’m hearing this from one person so if you know differently please comment below.
I’m always intrigued by colleagues who are in London one project, then bounce to Vancouver for another project. How does anyone save money doing that? If you’re one of those people feel free to comment. What’s your savings percentage? Whats your total tax percentage after deductions?
'Planet of the Apes': The Digital Muscle Behind the Oscar Nom
(hollywoodreporter.com)Raising the visual effects ante by creating smart simians, Peter Jackson's Weta Digital -- which already has brought orcs and Na'vi to life -- is hoping for a sixth Academy Award.
This story originally appeared in the Feb. 24 issue of The Hollywood Reporter.
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It's no surprise that Weta Digital, the Wellington, New Zealand-based visual effects company co-founded by Peter Jackson, is known as the house The Lord of the Rings built -- it was rewarded with visual effects Oscars for all three Rings movies. But in the nearly 10 years since the last Rings, Weta has proven it can go beyond Middle-earth, bringing to life all kinds of creatures from King Kong to the blue-skinned Na'vi of Avatar.
PHOTO: 'Rise of the Planet of the Apes' First Look: The Many Faces of Andy Serkis
In 2011 alone, Weta handled visual effects for X-Men: First Class, helped realize Steven Spielberg's The Adventures of Tintin and animated a new generation of intelligent simians for Fox's Rise of the Planet of the Apes. Its contributions to that last film have earned the company a spot in the current contest for the visual effects Academy Award and won it two Visual Effects Society awards.
Rupert Wyatt, the movie's director, knew he would have to go the computer-graphics route to bring Caesar and his fellow apes to life. "I was never a fan of using live animals for numerous reasons. Morally -- and practically," he says. "It would have been very hard to get them to do very specific things from a narrative point of view. Our one option was CGI, specifically using performance-capture."
Weta was a natural place to turn because it has been at the forefront of performance-capture. So Andy Serkis, who proved the viability of the process in Rings -- for which Weta experts filmed his movements and transformed him into Gollum -- was drafted to play Caesar. With a big part of the movie's $94 million budget going toward visual effects, Weta artists relied on both science and art.
PHOTO: Rise of the Planet of the Apes: Hollywood Premiere at Grauman's
The artists used medical data, explains VFX supervisor Dan Lemmon, to create "a new system of muscle and skin simulation. Basically it adds an additional level of simulation on top of the facial performance. Things like the way the muscles wrinkled and the way the flesh got mushed around on the face were a much higher-fidelity solution than we have had before." They even added touches like moisture beads on the apes' lower eyelids. Adds Lemmon, "We introduced advances on our translucency model to make the way the light interacts with the skin and the eyes more realistic."
Such attention to detail has made Weta, and its 850 employees, very much in demand. It is working on Jackson's two new Hobbit movies, currently in production, Ridley Scott's Prometheus, Joss Whedon's The Avengers and Zack Snyder's Man of Steel.
VFX supervisor Joe Letteri, a four-time Oscar winner and Jackson's partner in Weta, says: "Having Peter here definitely helps. We have been lucky to get these interesting projects and to be able to work with good directors on them. We are able to immerse ourselves wholly in a project, contributing ideas as well as techniques."
THE OTHER NOMINEES FOR BEST VISUAL EFFECTS OSCAR
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2
Tim Burke, David Vickery, Greg Butler, John Richardson
This is the final opportunity for the Academy to recognize the effects in the Potter franchise with an Oscar statuette. The series' most ambitious effort included loads of R&D and a collection of elements from CG characters to, for the first time, a fully CG Hogwarts school in which to stage the climactic battle.
Hugo
Rob Legato, Joss Williams, Ben Grossman, Alex Henning
With an emphasis on the artistic use of visual effects, echoing the film's focus on the history of movies, the effects team incorporated a range of techniques including CG, models and stop-motion. Even with its runaway train, "the movie doesn't stop and turn into a VFX moment," says Legato. Pixomondo was the primary effects house on the film.
Real Steel
Erik Nash, John Rosengrant, Dan Taylor, Swen Gillberg
Lead visual effects house Digital Domain brought virtual production techniques on location, using performance-capture to make the 'bot bouts feel natural in their live-action environments. Says Nash, "Using the SimulCam system developed for Avatar we could 'see' the fights on a monitor during principal photography and react to what was happening."
Transformers: Dark of the Moon
Scott Farrar, Scott Benza, Matthew Butler, John Frazier
Industrial Light & Magic really upped the complexity on the latest Transformers film with 3D and the most complicated creature the company had ever created -- the snakelike Driller, made up of 70,051 parts. Says Farrar, "The Driller wrapped around that tilted building demonstrates everything we put into these movies."
Weta's Sir Richard Taylor Is 'New Zealander of the Year'
(tvnz.co.nz) Sir Richard Taylor, who was named New Zealander of the Year last night, said it is "critical" young Kiwis do not think they have to leave the country to achieve their goals.
Speaking on TV ONE's Breakfast programme Sir Richard said it is "critical that they know they can do incredible things here in New Zealand. And our case, less than 15-minutes from the university where we studied".
"It's an incredible country that allows you to live your dreams and fulfill opportunities - that otherwise you may not be able to get in a bigger pool," he said.
The Weta Workshop founder was crowned New Zealander of the Year at a gala dinner in Auckland and used his acceptance speech to pay tribute to the creative industries.
Weta employs more than a thousand people, earns hundreds of millions of dollars a year and has scooped numerous Oscars for its special effects.
At the ceremony Sir Richard said he had to learn a lot about the industry from when he first moved to Wellington at the age of 17.
"I didn't appreciate television series were filmed in sets built specifically for the show," he said.
"I literally thought Close To Home was filmed in people's houses in Lower Hutt so it's been quite an education along the way."
Shining example
Sir Richard was described as an extraordinary New Zealander, who set a shining example by being a global player in the international movie industry, but choosing to base himself in New Zealand.
He told Breakfast that communities, councils and governments seem to acknowledge the creative industries are going to play a major part in the country's future.
"Our intelligent thinking and our creative ability can have a huge impact taking our brand out to the world," said Sir Richard. "We find that the support and encouragement that we get from those groups is second to none."
Sir Richard said since Lord of the Rings, Weta has opened up a number of different business opportunities, and that they hope to continue on the path of diversification.
"The new world is unfolding in front of us where there's cross media opportunities and fool be us if we can't stay ahead of it," he said.
The Wellingtonian beat Doctor Sharad Paul, a skin cancer specialist who also runs a bookstore that benefits low decile schools, and Dame Suzie Moncrieff, who started the World of Wearable Art competition.
Meanwhile, Sam Johnson, the face of the Canterbury Student Volunteer Army that helped with the Canterbury quake clean up won the young New Zealander of the year.
In accepting the award, Johnson paid tribute to the hundreds of students who were part of the army - saying they are his heroes.
The 23-year-old travelled to Japan after their major earthquake and tsunami to help universities there set up similar armies to help with the clean-up.
Oscars 2012 Predictions: Best Visual Effects
(wazootech.com)Were this a sane world where Oscar voters paid the smallest shred of attention to populist popcorn flicks that happen to be ? in addition to mega-bucks-grossing juggernauts ? freaking great movies, then the Best Picture nominees might look a little more like the Best Visual Effects ones (and less like this year’s top-prize picks currently going unwatched in theaters across the country).
“Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2″ isn’t just the biggest movie of 2011 ($1.3 billion in box-office receipts) but the finest installment of that venerable franchise. “Rise of the Planet of the Apes” is, in a word, so totally amazingly oh-my-lord awesome. Is that more than one word? Too bad, because “Apes” looked great, spun a heartbreaking character tale in the middle of a sci-fi thriller, and gave Andy Serkis, as the motion-captured central simian, the opportunity for one of the most affecting performances of the year. “Hugo” was pretty great too ? and at least Martin Scorsese’s film, alone among the Visual Effects nominees, also nabbed a Best Picture nod. And while we won’t go so far as to say “Real Steel” and “Transformers: Dark of the Moon” are excellent films, they’re both certainly fun (something we can’t say about Best Picture honoree “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close”).
The Visual Effects category, then, represents a sort of guide to some of the year’s great geeky movies. Here are our predictions for this category in 2012:
Who Will Win: “Rise of the Planet of the Apes” and the visual-effects whizzes at Weta Digital (the folks behind “Avatar”) have this category wrapped up. Their motion-captured apes were not only leaps and bounds more compelling than the mask-wearing creatures in past “Ape” films, but they were the year’s most stunning CG creations. Weta was so successful at grafting an ape’s body and facial features onto Serkis’ figure that you simply forgot you were watching a human actor. In any other year, “Hugo” would be well positioned to take this category. And the hour-long battle sequence at the end of Michael Bay’s “Transformers” was a staggering achievement. But this is no ordinary year. “Apes” for the win.
Who Should Win: Yeah, “Apes” for the win. It’s all too seldom the case that the most deserving nominee actually wins a category. Not so at this year’s ceremony. Our only beef is that in addition to topping this category, Serkis didn’t get any love in the best supporting actor category. There remains a reluctance on the part of awards-season insiders to honor an actor if his performance comes wrapped in pixels. One day, no doubt, that will change. And when that happens, perhaps we’ll all look back at Serkis’ turn as rebel leader Caesar and agree it was one of the best of 2011.
14 Academy Award-Nominated Movies: One Thing in Common
(eon.businesswire.com)SAN RAFAEL, Calif.--(EON: Enhanced Online News)--Digital artists devoted days and years behind the scenes to help create the movie magic seen in many of this year’s Academy Award-nominated films. In the categories for Best Visual Effects and Best Animated Film (Feature and Short) in particular, many artists relied on the same set of tools — Digital Entertainment Creation (DEC) software from Autodesk, Inc. (NASDAQ: ADSK).
“Great films depend on great storytelling and our technology is designed to enable artistic vision”
“Great films depend on great storytelling and our technology is designed to enable artistic vision,” said Marc Petit, senior vice president, Autodesk Media & Entertainment. “We congratulate the multitalented teams of artists from North America, New Zealand, Europe and Asia, and we are proud of Autodesk software’s role in helping them create these extraordinary movies.”
Full article: http://eon.businesswire.com/news/eon/20120216006331/en/ Academy-Awards/Best-Visual- Effects/Best-Animated-Feature- Film
Greg Cannom Does FX for Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter
(makeupdrshari.wordpress.com)While munching on tasty Valentine’s Day, Lindor chocolate truffles and applying for a few makeup jobs online, I ran across the recently released trailer, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter (2012). The movie is based on the popular book of the same name by Seth Grahame-Smith which was first published only 2 years ago.
Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter was produced by Tim Burton and directed by Timur Bekmambetov (he directed Wanted, Day Watch and Night Watch, all favs of mine) and staring Benjamin Walker, Rufus Sewell and Dominic Cooper.
But on to the important stuff, like who did the makeup for this film. Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter has a huge makeup department, including the incomparable Greg Cannom. While I am very interested in seeing the work of this great crew of artist, (whom I have listed below) the trailer isn’t very promising, I actually laughed at the end of it. The featurette is much more interesting than the trailer. I have embedded both below for your viewing pleasure.
VIDEO - Trailer - Take a look: http://makeupdrshari.wordpress.com/2012/02/15/greg- cannom-does-fx-for-abraham- lincoln-vampire-hunter/
Think Twice: VFX in Vancouver
(digitalgypsy.com)As many of you are aware, Vancouver is having a wonderful boom for VFX jobs. This benefit is three-fold. Companies get cheaper labor (theoretically), artists get cooler films to work on, and students get a foot in the door. However, the reality is anything but.
I love Vancouver. I lived up there for six years, and I felt at home. Great weather (aside from the rain), easy access to outdoor amenities, and it was just a really great place for an international city that is still in North America, and easily accessible by Californian VFX artists. Making a decision to move up north is not a small feat, especially in this rough and tumble world of the quick buck, cheap labor, and inadequate contracts. Here's one reason to think twice.
Demographia, a property-affordability survey published by Illinois-based consultant Wendell Cox, estimates that median real-estate prices in Vancouver are 9.5 times median household income. Only Hong Kong and Sydney are less affordable by that measure. (New York comes in at 5.1.)
Insane. The source for this is the NY Times, link located here. Why is this important? Well, thinking of where to live, and how much it will cost can significantly impact your quality of life. For families, it can be very tough to up and move, even to someplace within a couple hours flight.
The Canadian Real Estate Association says the average house price in Canada in April was C$372,544, up 8% from last year. In Vancouver, it was more than twice that, at C$815,252, up 21% from a year ago.
An average house in Vancouver cost 815 grand! Why should this even affect you if you're only renting up there? Well, you'd definitely need more than one roommate, and for families, that's a no go. This also affects the low end of the market, as many of the young people, the people that are tech savvy, the ones that these companies are trying to recruit to work on their popular VFX films, are heading to greener pastures where it is more affordable to live. You're not going to want to live in Surrey and commute at least an hour in traffic to downtown Vancouver to work long hours. You'll want to live in Yaletown, maybe Arbutus, South Granville, or maybe Kits and West End. The majority of the VFX studios are in South Granville, Fairview, Downtown, and Mt Pleasant. Subsidies only help the companies, they don't really help the artists. Sure you can ask for more money, but will a company want a student asking $40 an hour, or a seasoned professional asking $60? Mind you, the overtime laws in BC are very different from California, so if you're banking on getting time and a half and double time in the crunch, good luck if it's not written into your contract!
Companies are getting the itch to open up facilities up north, but often don't realize that it's not just about having a northern satellite office to get the vfx work, it's also about getting artists to fill those spots. Not just any artists, but seasoned professionals, most of which are not in BC and may not want to move for something that may not be permanent. All the seasoned artists in Vancouver are already at facilities of their choice which have been around for a decade already! Would you make the jump from a boutique in Vancouver to Sony Vancouver, DD Vancouver, or Scanline Vancouver? Especially if you've got an established team and repertoire with your crew at your boutique? If artists in Los Angeles can't or won't make the jump to Vancouver, do these companies really think they can find the quantity of people up north with the same experience? Time will tell. BC labor law also requires a certain major percentage of Canadian employees in a company, and if the majority of the talent come from outside Canada, will this even work? Time will tell.. London did it, and is doing amazingly well at this time.
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